There are no children called John anymore. Not a very representative sample but I have three kids and they don’t have any friends called John. It isn’t in the top 100 new names for boys - http://www.mumsnet.com/baby-names/most-popular-baby-names-england-wales
By this reckoning there are more Kaydens than Johns. There were always so many other people called John in my life none of us actually laid claim to the title. Of the three John’s I worked with one was known by his initials, another by an adulteration of his surname, adding a y on the end, whilst to avoid any confusion and remain totally democratic in denying all of us a claim to the name, I was christianed Nozzer.
I have a friend who is also called John who is known as Henry. Go figure a name so popular nobody could use it for fear of anonymity in a sea of Johns.
So does it matter what you call someone or something?
I only ask because I have recently been through the naming angst for a new company. I was given lots of different advise the best of which seemed to be, “Can you get the dot com?” and “Have you tried saying it when you answer a telephone, a 100 times?”
My first thought was calling it NingNangNong. I have passed the first test ningnangnong.com is mine. The second test proved slightly more problematic. When I mentioned it in passing, friends wondered whether it was a joke. Well no it wasn’t a joke it was a real suggestion. It is based on the Spike Milligan Poem, a poem that I love. There was a suggestion that it was possibly racist and might not work in China. I didn’t listen to these opinions.
I’ve been involved in this process twice before with differing levels of success. The first time was when the company I worked for got taken over and the new owners didn’t acquire the brand name. We had about 24 hours to come up with a new name.
We chose our postcode. North One. It is a name we grew into, such that we had to explain to people that we were based in Islington – like the postcode. The company became the name. There was another suggestion but nobody seemed to like it. It doesn’t matter, we wouldn’t have become a different company with the name RockRidge. It is probably a better name, doesn’t sound like a Taxi Company. We didn’t have the URL for North One either, they still don’t. They use some kind of bastard hybrid northonetv.com, this doesn’t seem to matter either.
There’s also the tricky thing of numbers – One or 1? Very important when you’ve got emails to think about.  Our parent company has a number in their name too, North One is always the word not the numeral. All3Media is never the word. In fact in a recent rebrand makeover, the media has been dropped and it is referred to as just all3, the number somehow more important to the brand.
The North One logo was a fantastically undemocratic affair – the popular myth was that it came free with the printing. Again it didn’t seem to matter. The logo was bold and recognisable.
Broadcast Magazine did comment that it was reminiscent of the Granada logo with an upwards pointing arrow – “From the North”. That might be reading too much into it. It certainly wasn’t influenced by our new ex-Granada owners.
Does any of this matter? You could post rationalise the North One logo, it is a cross between a motorway sign and a TV screen, but it was never meant to be either.
It was blue, which I liked.
The next time I had to think about this was when I launched a division for North One as a sub-brand. There were two options on the table N.ONE (pronounced EN DOT ONE) and 9HF – the remainder of the postcode. In a democratic vote N.ONE won. There was a good back story to the name, we had responsibility for the digital bit of North One’s business so we had a narrative about it all being about the DOT. I personally like leaving it out when I was asked to sign in when visiting another company. Name John Nolan, Company NONE. Still makes me laugh.
Oh and the N1 was the code name for the Soviet Moon Rocket to rival the SaturnV. I like Space stuff.
We didn’t have a URL problem either as we were really under the umbrella of the main North One brand.
We needed a logo. This is where the fun started. I chaired a company wide meeting to discuss two things, the first being a restructure where some staff were going to have to leave, this was fine and seem to be accepted, the second was me presenting some initial work on a new N.ONE logo and identity. All hell broke loose in the room. The design we settled on was a compromise to placate me I’m sure.
It was blue though, which I liked.
We got a lot wrong with N.ONE, but we got a lot right. The name worked and people used it. It worked internally as well as people identified with the digital bit. It was different to all the other North One entities, it was awkward. There were those who wanted to change it and make it more like the North One Logo. I saw their irritation as a sign of our success. This was probably what we saw as N.ONE’s role, to be different and awkward, we were encouraged to challenge the accepted ways of working and to do things differently.
Did the logo matter? – Not at all.
And so to a new company name. It is not NingNangNong.
I own the URL, the dot com the dot co uk. I’ve tried the phone thing and the friend thing. It seems to work.
But it does have another back story about going to the darkside of the moon. According to conspiracy theories Apollo20 was a joint mission of the USA and the former Soviet Union, which found lots of Alien technology hidden on the darkside. This poses a challenge with SEO which I am going to have to work out.
Does the name matter? Probably not, and the logo?
Maybe I can get that free with the printing.Â
